GrumblingGM

I've run a 5 games in TOR2E so far, no campaign, just one shots. I find it falls into the same trap Free League regularly fall in (see also Twilight 2000 4th edition for example), in that it's too crunchy to be a really good narrative system but at the same time it's too loosey goosey to be a really good gamist system. Because of this, the system fails to really hit the spot with either audience.

The starter set with Shire adventures is really to be avoided if you care at all about the lore; with the way they treat existing book characters. But outside of starter set, I feel like TOR2E really hits the spot when it comes to emulating the feel and ambience of Middle Earth.

If you're really a big fan of Middle Earth I can definitely recommend TOR2E, just without the starter set. But if you're not a hardcore fan of the setting I'm not sure the system has enough pull to draw you in.

As far as alternatives go; I've not played the current 5E adaptation, but I've played C7's 5E adaptation "Adventures in Middle Earth", and personally found it absolutely horrible. It was a good version of 5E, but it was nothing like Middle Earth. A lot of core D&D 5E gameplay and tropes are inherently incompatible with Middle Earth setting in my opinion.

1. at my FLGS where I'm a regular store DM
2. I am one of the organisers of a local indie RPG club that meets every 2 weeks
3. on Discord for whatever game I want to run. If I need additional players for Mausritter I'll post on the Mausritter discord, additional players for OSE I go to OSE discord, etcetera.

I only consider it too many when it becomes a burden. If you're spending a fortune on Zine Quest but struggle to pay your grocery bills that month, maybe it's too many books. If your book shelves are all full and you've run out of space in your home to add additional book shelves, maybe it's too many books.

And of course, i f you yourself feel like the engagement with most of your collection is unsatisfying, then too, maybe it's too many books. It might sound stupid and like a stereotype, but ask yourself "does this book spark joy?" If yes, it's not too much. If no, get rid of it.

Personally I have quite a large collection - about as large as I can go, as I actually reached the point where I'm literally running out of space in my home. But my pile of shame is tiny thanks to me GMing 2-3 game sessions a week, so I'm still getting joy from over 90% of my collection.

It depends on several things.

First, how do you treat your game nights? Do you treat them as a casual social gathering where it's ok to show up fashionably late; or to not show up without warning; or to drop out last minute because of whatever non-emergency reason? If so, don't be surprised players also treat it as something casual and social, and reading rules isn't casual or social. Maybe D&D just is too complex and not the right game for your table if you just want to run a casual social event.

Personally I treat my D&D style campaign game nights similar to how I'd treat coaching a sports club. If you want to be a striker on a soccer team, and you don't understand the off-side rules and don't want to learn them, no coach in their right mind wil put you on the field either. Sure I give my players time to learn, and don't expect them to know everything from day 1, but the absolute minimum I expect is a willingness to improve.

Practically, what I do for each player in my campaign is to compile a document which I expect them to focus on. They roll up a fighter, I will include the fighter class entry plus common special maneuver. They roll up a wizard, I will include the wizard class entry plus their spell book. They roll up a merchant (which I consider the most complicated class in my game and will discourage inexperienced players from taking it), I will give them the class entry plus a 101 intro to the economics of my campaign world. They have 3 months (approximate 10-15 weekly sessions) to understand the material I've given them, before I start reconsidering their presence in my campaign. Obviously there's some flexibility, it's not a life or death matter; but again I do expect at least some sign of willingness.

Next, please do understand I did specify campaign game nights above. Obviously things are different with one-shots like convention games or open table games at the local game store. I don't expect the players to know any rules there and will happily guide them by the hand from start to finish.

That is true. I do feel like whenever there's a general RPG group, it usually breaks down quickly into every post either being related to 5E, or complaining about 5E.

I stopped visiting RPG on Reddit because it felt like half the posts were just complaining about 5E, and while I don't disagree with those posts, I would rather talk about the things I DO enjoy.

I generally agree with you in that 1) I absolutely feel they have a lot of value as tags and 2) they shouldn't be used to put people in camps.

But otoh, it's human nature to group people together based on arbitrary tags. So I don't see how you can avoid the in-group/out-group behaviour while still keeping the terms around as tags.

I don't play official D&D anyway, but if I also exclude D&D retroclones, and only naming 1, then it would be Mausritter.

It's less sandboxey than my fantasy games, but I typically generate the missions using the tools in the book. If you use the tools to have your city, your districts and your factions in place, all you need is a quickly generated hook and I can easily proceed with a randomly generated mission.

Oh yeah, CWN is absolutely playable already. I've been GMing a campaign since version 0.9 of the beta - well, we already agreed to start playing with 0.7 but didn't play our first session until the day after 0.9 came out. And it's been going very well. Much better than any other beta game I've ever played before. I do run it in a very Shadowrun style way too. Never was a fan of CyberpunkRed (too crunchy) or Shadowrun (just an absolute mess).

Depends on what you want/expect and what your experience is with the hobby.

If you already play tabletop games, and have an idea what kind of rules work and what don't, and you're just making a game for your own group, it can be pretty easy.

If you wanna make a commercially viable product, it's going to be harder of course since a lot of extra factors come into play like who is making the art, the layout, the editing (NEVER EDIT YOUR OWN BOOKS! Always get a second pair of eyes to do the editing.), how you're gonna handling marketing, distribution, etcetera. And even systems-wise some things will become important that aren't important with a personal game, like system licenses (OGL, CC, All Rights Reserved, ...) and game balance becomes a lot more important as well in a product you're exploiting commercially.

If you've never (or only rarely) played games before and want to make something to play with friends, it's going to be rough, but I'm sure you can make that work. It's what people in the past did and while the very first designs of tabletop games were rough, there's still people 50 years later who swear by them, so they can't be all bad.

But if you wanna make a commercially viable product while having no clue of what works and what doesn't, honestly, I don't like to step on dreams, but I'd recommend to play games online for a few years and then try again. If you don't got friends who like to play then visit LFG forums or whatever fits.

Not exactly frostpunk because it misses the whole steampunk setting, but forbidden lands expansion : the bitter reach is all about hardcore survival in a frozen wasteland and does include settlement building rules as well. It might be worth looking into though it'll need a lot of homebrew to make it exactly like frostpunk

It's one thing if you're playing a duet RPG with a GM and solo player (or GM-less duet ttrpg, not sure of that exists?). But the last thing i'm interested in is 'exploring sex and romance' while I'm sitting around a dinner table with my sister, my brother in law, and three friends I have zero interest in. All while half the table is munching on Cheetos.